In the Middle East and North Africa, where political change occurs slowly, blogging has becomes a serious medium for social and political commentary as well as a target of government suppression. ByMohamed Abdel Dayem

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The smell of oil, profits, and risk hang heavily over Baku. To the Western visitor, this port city looks like a boom town. Azerbaijan has discovered new oil reserves in the Caspian Sea which may be nearly as great as those of Kuwait. And outsiders are rushing to town to pump oil and get rich quick, or to service ³the oilies² who are doing the pumping. Because of oil, Baku is now the most prosperous city in the Caucasus.

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Following the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Caucasian republics of
Azerbaijan and Armenia have declared their desire to model themselves
after Western European societies, with free - market economies and
democratic government. But their passage from communism to a new social
order has been rife with contradictions. In the current transition
period, leaders of both countries display authoritarian tendencies,
resulting in an ambiguous and sometimes surreal climate for the media:

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Six Jordanian journalists were among 405
prisoners released from Kuwaiti prisons on Feb. 25 as part of a pardon
by Emir Jaber al-Ahmad al-Sabah marking the sixth anniversary of the
country's liberation from Iraqi occupation.

CPJ's 1995 report surveys 101 countries

The bullet-ridden wall pictured on the cover is a detail from a photograph taken in Somalia by American photojournalist Dan Eldon of Reuters. Eldon, Associated Press photojournalist Hansi Krauss, and Reuter colleagues Hosea Maina and Anthony Macharia were murdered in July 1993 by a Somali crowd angered by the death of 50 countrymen in an air raid on Gen. Mohamed Farah Aidid's command post. Reuters/Dan Eldon